from my notes of 23 March 1994 (presumably from…the BAR…Biblioteca Academiei Romane): it is important to realize (and hard to remember in retrospect) that Voinea was not very visible in 1994 and was associated almost entirely with his role in the trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu on 25 December 1989.

Iosif Emilian’s lawyer (in September 1991) indeed suggested the involvement of the Prosecutor General in giving the cremations legal cover/legitimacy, hence explaining the presence of Dan Voinea and his colleague at Crematoriul Cenusa on 20 December 1989 (he also references Geta on p. 725). This is from the seventh volume of “Procesul de la Timisoara” available on the banaterra site.

But my use of the term “Orwellian” in the title of this paper is not only designed to capture Voinea’s uncanny ability to make definitive statements that are demonstrably wrong, to argue that black is white and white is black—from his denial of the use of gunfire simulators in December 1989, to his claim that the only “lunetisti” who acted after 22 December were from the Army, to his denial of the existence of weapons and (especially “vidia”) bullets not in the arsenal of the Army, to his denial of the existence of “terrorists,” to his denial that any military unit was attacked during the events, to his denial of the role of foreigners in the events….

I use the term “Orwellian” here as much to describe the ease with which he has gotten and gets away with errors, misunderstandings, and falsehoods that could easily be challenged, if not combated by his interlocutors in the Romanian media and intelligentsia. For it is the fact that he has been able and is able to get away with all this that is truly “Orwellian” and that is indeed a tragedy for Romania’s citizens. The tragedy is thus less the predictable “supply side” of the post-authoritarian lie, than the enthusiastic consumption and appetite for it. This is why I believe, accurately I would argue, that “December 1989” long ago became more about post-Ceausescu Romania than about what happened in December 1989.